Enemies
by Rose Stetson
Summary: SPOILERS! Filler between "End of Nights Part II" and "Eulogy". “The Mayans had a saying,” Nikola said, looking at John evenly. “'Oo ya waaling waaling wey tayil.' The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
1. Shock

**Enemies**

_Filler between "End of Nights Part II" and "Eulogy"_

The brilliant flash of light before her eyes had shocked her for a moment before the tears came more rapidly. Her daughter. EM field. Ashley was most assuredly dead.

"Helen!" John Druitt cried as he rushed in, followed closely by Nikola Tesla, Will Zimmerman, Henry Foss, and the Sasquatch affectionately named "The Big Guy".

"Kate!" Henry cried as he saw the limp bounty hunter beside the dark-haired scientist and leader.

Helen continued to sob as John approached her. "Helen, what happened?" He demanded as he grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently.

She didn't even flinch as he inadvertently touched the lacerations that ran from her shoulder to her forearm.

She took a gulp of air as she tried to calm herself enough to tell him the events. "Ashley..." She cried, still wimpering. "Dear God, Ashley..."

"What the bloody hell happened to my daughter, Helen?!" He demanded, angrily.

"She teleported!" Helen screamed at him as the tears came again. "She's gone!"

The shock on Druitt's face was apparent while the others in the room gasped at the severity of the news.

"Ashley?" Henry asked, faintly, as a sick look of realization dawned. He'd signed his best friend's death certificate by turning on that blasted EM shield.

Helen easily shrugged John's hands from her arms as she stood.

"Magnus, you've been hurt." Will said, catching her attention.

She threw him a venomous look as she cradled her arm with her uninjured one.

John was too stunned by the news to move. Contrary to his nature, a lump had begun welling up in his throat as tears threatened to fall. It wasn't true. His one chance at redemption could not have been so easily destroyed.

Kate moaned as she stirred from beside them, and Henry and the Sasquatch hurried to her side. Will had already begun to follow Helen. Only he and Nikola remained, and the vampire was in his own shock.

John thought of the irony. Now that he could do nothing to improve the situation, Nikola proved that he actually had a heart.

John stood, struggling to keep the tears at bay. With long strides, he prepared to leave the scene. He needed to be alone.

"John." Nikola called as John hurried past him.

John stopped without turning around.

"I'm sorry about Ashley." He said, empathetically.

He took a moment to harden his heart so that he could speak without appearing weak. If it hadn't been for the source blood or his appearance in the maze, Ashley would still be alive and well. "Go to hell, Tesla. Where you and your kind belong."


	2. The Ripper

The days after Ashley's death were somewhat hazy as John tried to make sense of what had happened. John Druitt was losing his grasp on the redemption for which he'd fought so long as the Ripper wrapped his murderous hand further around his soul.

If he got any sleep at night, his dreams would be filled with the twisted pleasure of taking a life as quickly as his daughter's had been taken.

He imagined coming upon the scientists who had created the monster that had taken over his daughter's body. He imagined wrapping his strong hands around their throats before he easily broke their necks.

He imagined listening to their mangled attempts at screaming as he slid the polished blade of his knife against their throats.

He imagined hearing their vain attempts to beg for their lives.

The rage within him built quickly. The Ripper had been buried too shallowly.

"_I can help you, John." She whispered as she looked into his eyes. "And not by prolonging this nightmare. I can find a cure..."_

"Helen..." John whispered. "I need you."

-

"_I want to be just like you, Mom." Seven-year-old Ashley said, looking up at her mother as she tended to one of her daughter's minor wounds._

Helen's heart jumped into her throat once more as she secluded herself in the study.

A soft knock at the door caused her to sigh. She didn't want to see anyone. She remembered another time when an unexpected and somewhat unwelcome knock came at the door. She'd just returned home from giving birth to Ashley. She'd sat in her quarters, staring at her baby girl.

"_You're so beautiful, Ashley." She whispered, looking over the rim of the bassinet at the newborn. With plump, pink cheeks and perfectly formed Cupid's bow lips that parted slightly in a soft sigh. "I promise not to let anything happen to you. I will protect you with everything I have in me."_

_From your father, she added silently. And from every monster that might hide under your bed._

_The knock at the door startled her, and she sighed before she stood to answer it._

_James Watson stood on the other side of the door. "I heard about your daughter's arrival." He said with a small smile. "And I thought I'd come and introduce myself."_

_Helen managed a weak smile. Seeing James reminded her of John, and thinking of John made her heart hurt._

"_You look tired, Helen. Perhaps I should come back another time?"_

_She nodded, gratefully. "I am tired." She admitted._

_He leaned in to kiss her cheek in the affectionate gesture of friends. "I'll stay for a few days to make sure you're all right."_

_She nodded. "That will be fine."_

"Helen, please." John's voice came through the door as he knocked again.

She walked over to the door, and opened it slowly. She swallowed as she looked into his eyes. Every line and every scar on his face reminded her of Ashley.

"_I'd tell you she was safe...but I'd be lying..." He said, taking a final sip of his brandy. "...I don't want her to die, Helen, but that is exactly what will happen if you test my resolve."_

"_...You're dying, aren't you?" She asked, realizing how much she still cared for the man behind the Ripper._

"_We're all dying, Helen." He said, easily. "...You saved my life once before." He sneered. "You can do it again."_

"_I can help you, John, and not by prolonging this nightmare. I can find a cure."_

"_She clearly doesn't know."_

"_How could I possibly tell her?" She demanded as tears welled up in her eyes._

"_She must have asked...how she came by her killer instinct?"_

"_She thinks her father's dead."_

"_I wonder how she'd feel to learn the truth."_

"_Your mind is poisoned, John," she whispered. "Through no fault of your own."_

"_Helen Magnus." He began, slowly, as the rage began to build within him. "A friend to nature's abominations. An enemy of common sense! YOUR BLOOD, HELEN!"_

"I do not wish to be disturbed." She said, softly as she went to close the door.

He placed a hand against it to keep it open. "Helen, please." He begged.

For the first time in more than a century, Helen Magnus saw a fraction of the man she'd first come to love.

"Please, John..." She whispered as tears welled up in her eyes. "Not now."

"He's coming back, Helen." He whispered, pressing more of his weight against the door. "Every time I think of what they did to her, what they made her become..."

"John, stop," she pleaded as memories of her daughter's last few days were thrust to the forefront of her mind.

"_Mom..." Ashley whispered, protecting her mother from the fatal blow that the other abnormal had been about to thrust upon her._

"_Ashley..."'_

"She became a monster because of me, Helen," John cried in anguish. "Would you not kill the monster that created the monster within her?"

Visions of the many times she'd pulled a gun on him caused her to swallow as she studied him. "Please, John, leave me be."

"You have offered me a cure for a century, Helen," he cried, giving into the rage of his grief. "And now, when I need it most, you would withhold it from me? She's gone, Helen! And none of this self-pity will bring her back!"

The pain that lined Helen's face made the remnants of John's heart break. Once again, he'd hurt the woman whom he'd most desperately loved with his entire being.

"Helen, please..." He whispered once more.

"Leave." She demanded through tear-stained cheeks as she closed the door in his face, leaned against it, and sobbed in the anguish of heart ache.


	3. Business

It should not have surprised him that Helen had refused him treatment. She'd tried to kill him so many times in the last century that he should have known the promise of a cure was too good to be true.

But the last several weeks had lulled him into a strange sense of security as far as Helen was concerned. She'd needed him, and he'd allowed her to manipulate him into acting as her lackey.

She was good. Too good.

Had she ever truly loved him? Or had she been the greatest actress he'd ever known?

With a firm grip on the crystal decanter, he poured himself another scotch. He wrapped his slender fingers around the glass and sipped at the amber liquor.

"I should have found her," he murmured as he sat down and sipped at the liquid.

"There was no way you could have known, John." The irritating tenor of Tesla's voice grated on his nerves. "The Cabal took us all in."

"Nikola Tesla." John sneered disdainfully as he set the liquor down on the table beside his chair, refusing to turn around and look at the vampire who stood behind him.

"John Druitt." He said, taking the steps necessary to face the bald man. "Or should I say – Jack."

"What do you want?"

"I want to finish the Cabal."

John picked his glass up again, fingering it for a moment before he took another sip of the alcohol. "Leave me alone, Tesla. I'm not in the mood to deal with you at the moment."

"You don't want to exact your revenge on the people who had morphed your daughter into the animal that tried to kill Helen," Nikola goaded. "You don't want to squeeze the life from them as they suffocated Ashley's consciousness from her own body?"

John pretended to ignore the vampire.

"The Mayans had a saying," Nikola said, looking at John evenly. "'Oo ya waaling waaling wey tayil.' The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"Are you speaking of yourself or the Cabal?" John asked, his eyes darkening.

"You and I have our differences, John." Nikola said, soberly. "But I'm not the one responsible for your daughter's death."

"You very well might have been." John growled, feeling the intense urge to end the vampire again. "And with all the things you've done to me and to Helen, I would be within my rights to rip you limb from limb."

"My part in Ashley's death was only in response to the Cabal's initial actions." He reminded, calmly. "And only after Helen offered me the key to make the weapon one-hundred percent effective."

John finished his scotch with another gulp as he thrust paranoid visions of Helen's own dark side from his mind.

"And let me remind you that the weapon was never fired at Ashley." Nikola said, playing with his fingers. "Only at her comrades."

John studied the man with whom he shared a complicated 130-year history. The vampire looked like he'd aged a hundred years in the last few days, and John had a feeling that he didn't look much better.

"What do you suggest?" John asked as he shoved aside his nagging insecurities about plotting any kind of attack with Tesla.

"You take one, and I'll take another. Hit them in two different places, and they'll never see it coming."

John nodded soberly, critically considering the plan with the logic of a general and the prowess of a serial killer. "We'll leave in the morning," he finally pronounced soberly.

"A pleasure to do business with you." Nikola said with a smirk.


	4. Victim 1

He stood in the bell tower of Christ's Church Cathedral, casting his gaze over Oxford, England as he thought coldly about the last several days since he'd first allied himself with Nikola Tesla.

He stalked his victims like he had over a century before, like a predator hunting his unsuspecting prey.

Of course, his almost implausibly high-level of experience in this role had aided him quite nicely as he'd found the first of his victims. Thanks to the files which Nikola had found in their initial breach of the Cabal's compound, he'd found the lead geneticist who had transformed Ashley from the young woman she'd been in Helen's care to the monster who had tried to kill her.

He made no attempt to hide her abduction from the rest of the world. In fact, he'd welcomed the publicity. It would make the rest of his hunting that much more satisfactory if every single Cabal operative was cowering in fear at the knowledge that they would be next.

_The red-haired scientist was walking into her apartment building when he'd finally caught up with her._

"_Excuse me," he greeted, politely as he fumbled around in his pockets. "I seem to have lost my key..."_

"_Oh, are you new?" The scientist asked with a kind smile._

"_Just moved here from London three weeks ago." He said with a shrug. "My apartment is still a mess. I'd gone out for dinner, only to discover I'd left my keys inside."_

_The woman chuckled softly. "Happens to me all the time," she said, opening the door for her killer._

_In the darkness of the stairwell, he grabbed hold of her arms and transported her to Nikola's lab in the forgotten underbelly of Budapest, Hungary._

"_You're..." The scientist whispered as her eyes widened in recognition._

"_Late." Nikola said, walking out to greet them. "As usual."_

He would leave Nikola to his work, returning to the Sanctuary periodically to verify that Helen was still safe. She was his only family now. The only person he could ever hope to claim to have protected effectively. And even that was a gross exaggeration.

A vibration caught him by surprise, and he reached for the cellular phone in his pocket. "What?" He asked as he answered the phone.

"I'm sending you the information we've gotten from her."

"What did you do with her?" He asked with clinical objectivity.

"Well, she can't rejoin society, if that's what you're wondering. She's just a shell of the woman she once was."

"What are your plans to dispose of her?"

"I thought you'd want to do that yourself."

"I'm not your delivery boy." He snarled.

"It seemed to suit you well when you were working for Helen." He sneered.

"Why did I decide to align myself with you?" He growled in agitation.

"Speaking of the tormented lover from your youth..."

John rolled his eyes as he sighed.

"What does she think of your escapades?"

"I will be there to pick up her carcass as soon as I am able." He declared seriously as he ended the phone call. He thought of Helen as he looked at the view from the Cathedral in which they should have married one hundred and twenty years previously.

As he thought of Helen, he thought once more of Ashley, and he desired once more to feel the control of squeezing the life from his daughter's captors.

His phone vibrated, and he looked at the text on the screen. His next victim would be the one whose life he would snuff out with his bare hands. Perhaps he would use his hidden blade from the Ripper killings. It would be most ironic.

And then, he would see Helen. He would convince her to put Ashley's death behind her and find the closure he so desperately wished to find for himself.

If only they were no longer the enemies that Jack had turned them into. If only Ashley had not died. If only they had been an unbroken, unfractured family like the one that Helen had so deserved.


End file.
